Westcountry wanderings » seaweed

Wandering the beach

nigel — Sun, 22 May 2011 07:30:10 +0000

These images were taken in late March however there have always been other things to blog somehow. I was walking the beaches at Paignton and Preston and looking at those things far closer to me than I usually do. In part this was due to reading an article in a photography magazine which suggested photographing items in a garden for a change – I decided doing this project on a beach might be interesting. I love the intensity of colour in the seaweed above.

Above are a collection of some of the images I caught while walking the beach. It is so easy to forget to look in our rush to get places these days and we miss out on some remarkable sights. The colours and both simplicity and complexity of these small inhabitants and sea plants on our beaches are striking. This is an approach I’ll return to sometime as I found it interesting and rewarding but I’ll leave this blog with another seaweed.

The opportunities of Spring tides

nigel — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:00:51 +0000

The weather was quite good and it was the last of the really low Spring tides of the season. It seemed worthwhile exploring the shoreline to see what might be exposed that would not be on normal low tides.

The low tide made the sign on Paignton harbour wall unnecessary for a while at least.

However it also allowed maintenance work on the anchorages on the harbour floor after a winter of storms and bad weather. The lattice work of chains on the harbour floor where being tested and replaced where it was needed.

The very low tide gave a clear view of the spring that comes up through the sand on Paignton beach. Depending on the flow of water the effect of it can been seen at high tide but getting close enough to see it properly requires a low tide. The flow depends on the recent rainfall and there has been quite a bit recently so the spring was bubbling up strongly.

At the pier the shellfish and barnacles on the supports were very evident.

At Preston (the north end of Paignton seafront) there were many shellfish exposed both in large groups and singly.

In pools there were anemones (though not quite as colourful as elsewhere in the Bay), urchins and a variety of seaweed. I did avoid as much disturbance as possibly preferring to leave flora and fauna undisturbed. As can be seen above I did see starfish, there were a few around. I am fairly certain this is a Common Starfish (Asterias rubens) . There were a few around that were almost out of water however they were close to the edge of the sea at the point it was turning so would have been immersed again shortly after I took the picture.

Asterias

Beachcombing

nigel — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:52:21 +0000

One of those days when the weather was better than we had expected it would be so we decided to get out in the winter sun. We had not walked along the coast in Torbay for a while so we headed to Broadsands and parked there and walked around the coast to Elberry Cove.

This holds many memories from my childhood. It was a place I walked to and swam from many times. The “beach” itself is really one of quite large pebbles but with the tide out some of the sands were exposed. As importantly there were also rock pools to look into. The colours on the anemone in the rock pool were stunning.

Few people were out despite the fact that it was a good day so we were able to explore uninterrupted. Some of the rocks and the colours could be seen as abstract art and were very attractive.

A final bonus returning to the car was a buzzard sat on one of the posts on the road side when we first saw him. By the time I had the camera out he had flown to the ground and this shot is zoomed quite a bit.

Some objet trouvé!

nigel — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:00:50 +0000

(Well I am doing a French course at present )

Hopefully I will not be here when this is published. I should be walking on the South West Coast path at the time. I wanted to try a post that was automated as much as anything. I hope there will be some interesting images from the walks which I will get on here as soon as I can when I am back.

For now though some things I’ve found recently.